MX Shop Forum :: 5 MINUTES to load slow index.php - help please!

Hi

The performance of my MX Shop site varies enormously - from around 5 seconds to 5 minutes to load the index.php page. Mostly it's nothing like that extreme, but 15 - 20 seconds is not uncommon; and once loaded clicking around will also be slow.

The site is http://www.campervanstuff.com

Slowdown happens after you click 'Enter our UK Shop' - this link takes you to the index.php page.

The site is hosted on a shared platform and my mainstream provider (clara.net) has monitred the site and tells me that although they also see the slowdown when they monitor, other sites on the platform are behaving normally. They say the the problem is due to too many MySql queries being executed in the scripts on my site and that these need optimising. They have also tested the site on a different server and say this supports their conclusion.

I have made mods to the standard index.php page; my changes include adding extra recordset queries which get the names for categories, products, manufacturers and pages so that these can be used for page titles via the 'Include Multiple Static Pages' code (modified) which exists in the index.php page. (I built on advice in answers to my earlier posting - see http://www.interaktonline.com/Products/Web-Applications/MXShop/Product-Forum/Details/125432/Adding+unique+page+titles+to+replace+%5C%27Pages%5C%27.html)

Can it really be that adding the extra queries would have such a dismal efffect - and if so why would browsing around still be slow once the index.php page has loaded? In any case the site always seemed to me to be slow before I made these mods. Is it the case that MX Shop is generally a slow performer?

I fear that I must be losing potential customers who are unlikely to stick around if the site is even moderatly slow; let alone when it takes minutes!

Please suggest steps which I might take to fix this.

Regards

David

Some further info:

Since my first post I have added indexing to additional fields in the products_prd table - fields which are used in JOIN operations in the queries which I mentioned earlier.

The site is going much faster today but I can't tell whether this is because of the extra indexing or for other reasons ie the usual variability. The hosting company (Clara) explains the variability (which they say is not relected in other domains on the shared platform) as being likely due to heavy traffic on my site / or the platform at times, which has a disproportionate effect on my site because of the query scripting issues.

Today the time is 3 - 5 seconds. Yesterday, at the time I contacted  Clara, up to 5 minutes. Although Clara could see the slowness itself, it still maintained that even this level of degradation was due to the scripts.

Does this seem feasible?

Regards

David

Hello,

The speed with which a site load depends on many factors including server load and bandwidth. Indeed, adding extra queries to pages adds an extra overhead to the page loading time, but we have seen many installations of MX Shop running OK so it should not be from it.

Regards,
Razvan RACASANU

Hi Razvan

I understand that there are many factors involved - but the issue is whether there could be something in the scripting of my site which makes it so sensitve to these factors (say server loading) while other sites on the same platform are not affected at all.

Does it seem reasonable to you that this could be the case?

Regards

David

Hello,

Being dynamic pages (not HTML) the server load can have a bigger impact on them. Also, since the recordsets query the database on page load, if the database server is on the same machine, this also increases the loading time.

Regards,
Razvan RACASANU

Hi Razvan

Thanks. I don't know whether the database resides on the same machine but there's nothing I can do about it anyway without changing my hosting package; however I'll ask Clara about it.

I notice that you don't comment on '5 minutes'; this is the bit where I find it hard to accept that other sites on the platform would not also be seeing degradation and I would be thinking that it was due to general server overload.

To help my understanding of the issues can you explain how often the loading / reloading of the index.php page takes place? Once the page has loaded initially, do all of the scripts run all over again each time the user clicks an item - eg an item in the categories list or manufacturers list, or the 'Detail' link in a listing of products? 

Or do most of these items remain static and the only scripts that run are those needed to change the content of the affected area?

Regards

David

Hello,

The 5 minute loading time is very high but since this has not happened it could have been only in that particularly time. When requesting the page, the entire script that makes that page is run and not only the things that change. For example, when accessing the URL:

http://www.campervanstuff.com/shop_stuff/index.php?mod=product&id_prd=989,

the index.php page and the product page are executed to create the page.

Regards,
Razvan RACASANU

Hi Razvan

That's useful to know; so clearly the main place to look for optimisation possibilities is the index.php page. However I have only very limited abilities in this whole area.

Is it feasible to move the extra queries which I added for the page titles to other dynamic pages: for instance the query which gets the product titles would be moved to the relevant prod view page so that it only runs if the user clicks on the 'Detail' link in the product list, so fetching the detail page?

Regards

David

Hello,

Yes, you should move the queries that are unused in index.php in the pages where they are actually used, so that they will only be executed when they are needed.

Regards,
Razvan RACASANU